Gizo Week 3: The quest to get to Munda

Getting into the swing of things here now! Spent a lot of time in Emergency Department. It had been manned by the Australian St Vincent’s Hospital Doctor (it’s one of the their rotations), but there was a short period in between changeover, meaning the local doctors were having to cover ED as well as the rest of the hospital. Amelia and I had a bit more responsibility- we saw a lot of patients, which we would then review with the doctor covering. It was a great learning experience! The new St Vincent doctor, Nikita, arrived on Thursday, so we’ve been working with her in ED since. Some of the more interesting presentations have been a patient with a haemoglobin of 23 (normal is 115-160!), TB, ophthalmic herpes, falls from various trees, lots of malaria and diabetes complications.

Newsflash: we’ve managed to open our coconut/ our neighbour George discovered me bashing it against the stairs outside our flat to no avail and showed us. Apparently you have to whack it in a specific place and use a scrapey thing to scraped the flesh out. We tried sqeueezing the flesh to get some coconut milk and obtained a grand total of about 100mls coconut milk.

Being Easter, we had a long weekend, so I decided to go and visit Hannah who is doing her elective at the Helena Goldie hospital in Munda. It’s about 1.5hrs away by boat. I’d been told by locals that there are loads of boats that go over to Noro, a large port 20mins bus from Munda, so I went down to the pier after lunch as instructed. I waited.. and waited. I found one boat apparently going to Noro, but then it transpired that it was in fact not going there. I then found a group who were waiting on a specific boat for Noro, however it then turned out that everyone apart from me was getting off at a village on the way, meaning it would be just me and the driver for a large part of the journey, probably not the safest! So I gave up! On the plus side, it gave me a chance to chat to a few locals. One is always slightly wary- I had to kindly refuse to one young man that unfortunately I would not give him my facebook details so that I could send him cheap electrics from the UK and no I would not be able to support him to set up a hotel. I explained the concept of the timetable system we have in the UK, which they agreed was a good idea, yet they all seemed very happy to wait for hours on end at the pretty grotty pier. I passed by later in the day and saw some of the same people waiting that I had seen there 6 hours earlier! I definitely won’t be complaining so much next time the trains are delayed by 10mins in the UK! Another advantage of the lack of boats was that I could attend my 3rdhula class! After the class Jade and I went to the Maundy Thursday service at the church. There was a visiting choir, which meant there was glorious music amongst the long service.

On Friday I tried my luck again to catch the boats arriving from Noro in the morning. I identified one that would be returning to Noro at “around 1pm” (which I interpreted as any time from 1-5pm). Meanwhile I received good news from Hannah that there were some patients from the hospital in Munda coming across to Gizo, so there would be a boat going back to the hospital. It took a few hours, which I used by helping out in ED (with the hidden agenda of making sure I got on the boat back with those patients!) but finally we set off for Munda, about 27hours after initially intended!

It was a beautiful boat journey, passing by many uninhabited islands. It rained in the last part of the trip, so the passengers but a big tarpaulin over their heads and hid inside, which was pretty comical. At the back, we had a big see-through plastic sheet, which was quite effective! It’s amazing how any civilisation suddenly appears amongst the deep luscious green of the uninhabited islands.

On arrival at Helena Goldie Hospital, Hannah was busy seeing patients, so I went and joined her. We had quite an experience performing the Epley manoeuvre on a patient with presumed BPPV (after carefully reading the Oxford Handbook and checking, with demonstration, with the swiss doctors at the hospital, who were off-duty painting one of the wards). The manoeuvre, which seems rather uneventful- literally just leaning the patient to one side then to the other- seemed to solve the problem instantaneously, which we were both pleasantly surprised about!

The next day, we headed into town and to Agnes Lodge, where our boat was leaving from, and grabbed a coffee while we waited for the driver (Solomon time is defs a thing- they just do things when they please!). It was so amazing to drink proper filter coffee in a bright yellow mug- a snippet of home. Once they’d found the driver, we set off for skull island. Traditionally the tribes bring the skulls of respected chiefs to the sacred island, and also the heads of enemies they have defeated. While eerie, you could sense that this was a special place. There was an altar and locals go there to get advice from the ancestral spirits. On route back we stopped at another island, Lola, where there is a small resort. We followed their “bush path” through the jungle to the other side of the island where we went for a snorkel, then had a nice lunch at their restaurant. It was beautiful looking around from the boat at all the little islands and the clear sea with so many different shades of blue. You can actually see the fish the and coral from the boat. Once back at the hospital, we went for a wonder along the coast while the sun set.

On Easter Sunday, we made a fabulous breakfast. Lenita, the local junior doctor who lives with Hannah, made some amazing pancakes, which we had with some guava and pineapple. We played “Easter hymn” from Cavalleria Rusticana followed by hannah’s “choral classics” playlist to get a bit of an English fix. We thought it fitting to go to the local church, where we got a long special mention as visitors to the church! We did our best to latch on to some of the hymns, most of which were bangers! The service went on for an age as each of the surrounding areas had their choir singing a song as an offering. It was lovely, with some genuinely impressive singing, but not the most time efficient. The absolute highlight was a play of the Easter story put on by the women of the church. One of the nurses from the hospital had the starring role of Mary Magdelen! We ended up leaving the service a little early as we had afternoon plans.

We got a boat to a lovely island, Kundu Kundu. There was a very shallow stretch of water between “big kundu kundu” and “small kundu kundu”, where there was a fantastic sprawling reef, which we snorkelled. It was a little challenging making sure we stayed clear of touching the coral at such shallow depths, but it did mean we could see some amazing fish close up! We also had a relax in some hammocks! Treated ourselves to dinner at Agnes Lodge restaurant, a beautiful spot right on the sea with fantastic sunset views. I tried some seafood linguine which took around 1.5hrs to arrive- apparently the restaurants also operate on Solomon time. The highlight, however, was the cold NZ Sauvignon Blanc. I’ve barely seen any wine out here!

On Monday, we went and got a coconut iced bun from the bakery, which we had with our filter coffee at Agnes Lodge. As getting a boat to an island for the day was looking pretty pricey, we opted to kayak over to Hopei island ourselves! It was about an hour journey and fairly tiring by the end, but the sea was generally very calm. It was nice to be on the sea- I felt a bit like the original people of the South Pacific kayaking to a new island! We had the island all to ourselves! We walked on the beach around the whole island and had a swim. We blasted out Moana and attempted to sing along (realising we knew none of the words) as we ran into the sea. It was amazing to look out at the different colours- the different blues of the sea, the greens of the islands, the white waves crashing over a reef in the middle of the ocean, the darker clouds on the horizon. Unfortunately it started to rain, so we took refuge under the one little hut on the island and read until it cleared up a bit and we could kayak back. Once back in town, we wondered over to the war museum; a large shed at the back of someone’s house where he has gathered up any remnants of when the Japanese and US were at war here. It was nice how everything was just conglomerated together, completely covering the tables and walls. The man was hugely passionate about his work and told us some amazing stories about the items he had found. A particularly memorable one was about a soldier who had been split up from his regiment and continued to hide in the jungle and carry out solo attacks!

We’d kindly been invited for Spag Bol at Dr Hedi and Dr Sedi’s house- the two swiss doctors who have been at the Helena Goldie hospital the last 2 years. They made us a green papaya salad and spag bol with some ‘sol brew’, the local beer here, followed by some biscuits and amazing coffee! Aside from the fantastic food, it was fascinating to hear about everything they had done in their time here. They told us stories about some of the more interesting cases they had seen as well as some quite sad stories. It seems that the local doctor, apparently in charge of the hospital, is a pretty terrible person and should have been struck off years and years ago. It was shocking to hear about some of the things he had done and his lack of regard and respect for his job. On a more positive note, Hedi and Sedi have done lots of things for the hospital that will last for years and have set up a successful syphilis screening programme at the Soltuna factory nearby. It struck me that they have given up so much of their time and money and done so much for this hospital on the other side of the world and will likely receive no recognition for it. I tried to impress on them before I left just how admirable they were.

My journey home was surprisingly easy. The bus to Noro arrived only 10minutes late to the hospital (quite frankly a miracle here!) and on arrival at the port in Noro, I found a boat going back to Gizo straight away. After a quick check of the boat- it had life jackets and a safety raft and the driver seemed to be sober- I got on and we sped off to Gizo.